Sunday, October 23, 2011

Since I published the article on Slenderman a few months ago, I have been inundated with e-mails of personal accounts of encounters with the tall entity.

I thought the Halloween season would be a great time to share some of the more creepy one's with you, my friends. Some names and locations have been changed.

"Traci" writes,

"I was maybe 4 when I remember seeing the man standing outside of the daycare door. I was afraid, really afraid. He bent over in a weird way and smiled. His skin was too white, like a custard and his teeth were rotten. I remember crying and crying. He went away, but I could feel him. He wanted to get me... He would appear when I was really stressed out, either from school or after fighting with a friend. the worst was when I was 11 and my best friend Joanne and I had a really bad fight at a sleep over and I came home in the night. I remember walking down the sidewalk and I heard something behind me. About a block away the darkness kind of shifted, I don't know how to say it any different. But in that darkness far away I saw this tall thin man walk just into the light of the streetlamp. He was really tall and had a bald white head. That was when I remembered the bad man from daycare. I started to run and every time I looked behind me the man was closer, but I never saw him move. I got home and slammed the door and locked it. I didn't know what I said to Mom and Dad, but I ran upstairs to my room and hid under my bed covers. I swear that a few hours later i looked out the window and he was standing across the street just at the edge of the streetlight lamp...It is like he is waiting for me to do something, to mess up or something, and he will get me. I know I will die."

Ted writes,

"We were deep in the woods of Beech Fork camping, when one night we fell asleep around the campfire. I remember waking up and I saw something move in the trees. I don't know if I was dreaming or having a hallucination, but just at there was a tall thin man in a dark suit walking in the woods at the edge of the camp. When his face came into view i noticed he had a demonic grin, it scared the ____ out of me. I kicked my brother and he shot up in his chair, but by the time I tried to get him to notice the man, he was gone. Needless to say I had a hard time sleeping for the rest of the weekend..."

June tells a story of her childhood,

"We lived in a small house in a normal suburb. My bedroom was all the way down the hall from the bathroom, and I never had an issue with making my way to the bathroom until the one night I woke up and at the end of the hall there stood a very tall man dressed in dark. He had a long, thin neck and lurked in the shadows in the corner right next to the bathroom. I screamed and ran to my bedroom. Dad came to see if I was alright and after I told him what i had seen, he assured me that it was a nightmare. He walked with me to the bathroom for a week after that, and it was quite a while before the dark man returned. This time I was halfway to the bathroom when I noticed movement in the corner and there he was again. he was a little different, I can't really describe it right, except that to me as I remember it he was 'squiggly' as if all of him was moving at one. I remember I froze where I was and then his face poked out of the darkness, it was like a sideways football but very pale pink. His eyes were deep set and he had only a slit for a nose and no lips to speak of. It's teeth were sharp and almost needle like. It opened its mouth and made a grunting noise as it moved its jaw as if he was chewing. I screamed and wet myself right there. I don't know how long I stood there screaming, but it felt like forever. The man started to move from the shadows, and the next thing I knew my fathers hands were on my shoulders shaking me. The man was suddenly gone into the shadows and I remember staring into my fathers face for a while before I recognized him. he had spun me around and was asking me what was wrong. That was when I was 11 years old, and ever since I have been scared to death of the dark. I do not know if I was seeing things, that my imagination had gone wild for some reason; but I swear every now and then I see the shadows move."

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Lastly, from Brie

"Honestly, I don't know where it came from. I have no idea what my imagination was drawing upon to produce it. But it did a good job because, even to this day, I will have an instant and crippling reaction to it.

It was very tall -- seven or eight feet, but maybe a bit more -- and humanoid. It wore a dark suit with a white shirt and black tie. It wore a black bowler hat. But it had no face. Where a face should have been, there was a white blank. Nothing. And it would just stand there, staring.

I remember seeing it -- probably from dreams, but extremely vivid dreams. I remember seeing it standing across the street from my house. Sometimes, at night, I would creep to the window, and there he was -- staring up at my window. That's when I would creep into my parents' bed and sleep with them, which was something I generally didn't like to do. But for some reason, he could never cross the street.

But he COULD pass into my grandparents' (maternal) yard. I remember him there only twice. Once was a sunny afternoon, hiding behind the cherry tree that used to be there. Between the tree and the neighbour's dog pen, but closer to the tree. And then once on an overcast day, up at the top of the hill, by the old shack that was inexplicably up there. (My grandfather told me to never go in there because there were probably raccoons.) Again, just staring.

And once, around the time my sister was born, I saw him at the window. At the ___ window. I just remember backing away slowly, going into my uncle's old bedroom, and hiding in the closet. Grandpa found me eventually. He asked if I was playing a game. Grandma scolded me to get out. I don't remember what I did, but I know I wasn't speaking. They eventually got it out of me, and Grandma said that he had come because I hadn't eaten my lunch (I was always refusing to eat because I had all kinds of digestive problems.) Obviously, they didn't take me seriously. But again, I don't really think it was real. It was probably a bad dream.

But the times I remember the most -- the most vivid, and the most terrifying -- were at my grandparents' (paternal) house. I have so many memories of this thing there, specifically. These grandparents were the ones from County Cork, Ireland. They believed strongly in their folklore, and for whatever reason, were convinced that I was a changeling. Now, I was allowed to play outside -- by myself, which I loved because nobody else would let me do that -- but only if I had some special stones in my pocket and a set of Rosaries around my neck. (They were wooden and didn't have a cross attached to them. So maybe they weren't exactly Rosaries.) They were afraid that my "real" family would be back to get me someday. (Coincidentally, they hid all kinds of objects like this around my house. Obviously, though, not at my other grandparents' house.)

I was allowed to go back as far as I could in the yard, but I couldn't, say, go across to other houses. That was the only rule. The backyard was big enough, but beyond that was an old horse pasture that was covered in grass as tall as I was. There was an old fence, too, that was falling apart.

That's where I saw it. In the horse pasture.

It was an overcast day. It was going to rain. I think it was April. I was wearing my red raincoat that I could never snap by myself because the snaps were too hard. The lining had all these red whales all over it.

But, yeah, I was toward the back of the yard -- by the pear tree -- and I saw him. I froze, just watching. And then he moved. And the way this thing moved -- it wasn't human at all. It was, I don't know, serpentine. Distorted. It was like Stretch Armstrong, or something. He took one big step -- his legs stretched -- and he was halfway across the field. And he did it again, and he stood at the border of the yard. Just standing and staring. Staring with that blank face.

I remember running. I remember screaming hysterically. I saw Grandma on the porch. And then there was a huge gap of time missing. I was on the couch, covered in blankets. Granddad was there. He said I had gotten sick, had some kind of "spell", but I was okay now. There was an overwhelming sense that I was safe. That whatever it was, it could not cross that border into the yard."

Are these stories all telling of the same type of entity, or are these mimicking spirits drawing from a communal subconscious? As the Slenderman mythos grows, so does the personal encounters of an entity that is either similar to the tall man or it is Slenderman itself made manifest...

An Exorcist's Field Guide

About The Paranormal Pastor

is a Writer and has been a Christian Minister for more than 25 years in both Mainline and Evangelical Denominations. He holds a B.A. in Biblical Literature from Nyack College and an M.Div. In Pastoral Ministry with an emphasis on Pastoral Counseling from Alliance Theological Seminary. He has served as a short term Missionary to Burkina Faso, and has Ministered to the homeless in New York City's Hell's Kitchen. He is currently the Pastor of St.Paul's United Church of Christ in Erie, Pennsylvania.
He is also a freelance journalist for Examiner.com, has a column in the Tri-State Senior News and has also written for Fate Magazine.
As a Seminary trained exorcist he has done consulting work with various paranormal investigators and television productions in the United States as well as investigators and writers across the globe